Fighting Food Insecurity
Give a hand up to a foster youth aging out of the system so we can help them get ready for the real world.
Meal Nation
How we’re helping foster youth at risk of going hungry
Foster youth students in college often lack access to basic needs as compared to their peers with a biological or built-in family. Many foster youth have had to move through 8 to 50 homes before they age out of the system. While these students are working hard to stay in college long enough to graduate – historically, a feat only 3% of all college students from foster care will achieve - they lack access to basic needs such as food.
When COVID-19 forced everyone into lockdown, foster youth students had nowhere to turn and ended up in and out of homeless shelters, in unstable housing or sleeping in their cars.
SO WE DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING - WITH YOUR HELP!
Our impact
76,169
meals
1,865
foster youth
57
colleges partnered with
HERE'S HOW WE ARE DOING IT
By partnering with Bento and Freshly, we fight food insecurity on the doorsteps of our most vulnerable population. The Meal Nation Program includes direct service for meal delivery or meal pick-up.
We are currently operating in 57 colleges across California – having provided access to over 69,994 meals to 1,865 foster youth students.
BENTO
Our partnership allows foster youth students to access ready-to-order meals from local eateries on their phones using basic text messaging - at no cost to them. This partnership is critical to provide food to foster youth students that do not have stable housing, move from homeless shelter to shelter, or are living in their cars.
FRESHLY
Our partnership provides meal deliveries to foster youth students with stable housing, but live in food deserts or lack access to reliable transportation.
The goal of Meal Nation is to ensure each foster youth student gets to eat at least one meal a day until they are able to get connected to public benefits.
Program Success
98%
found it very easy to enroll
95%
found that the program had a significant impact on their lives
93%
found that the programdecreased their stress/anxiety levels
95%
found that the program increased their motivation to perform in school/work
TESTIMONIALS